Tag: Guardians Of The Galaxy

So I recently saw Guardians of the Galaxy right? And I loved every minute of it! I could write a review about how fantastic the movie was, talk about how it has the perfect blend of action and comedy, a thrilling plot and instantly likable characters, but you could read that anywhere. It would just be my opinion anyway, but as a friend and a fan of comic books and especially good movies, GO SEE THIS MOVIE. Now, with that out of the way, I can explain in my opinion on what I think is the most impressive and important element of the movie, the use of the music. Not the orchestra score that is basically required every big budget movie but the classic rock/blues songs that are randomly featured. These songs continuously reflected the tone of the movie. Ok, briefly without royally spoiling movie, I’ll explain what I mean. In the movie, the main protagonist, Peter Quil (Chris Pratt), is abducted from earth at a young age. The only thing from his home planet that he is able to take with him is an old walkman that housed an “awesome” mixtape his mother created for him. The songs that feature on the mixtape, serve as the in- movie soundtrack. So in other words, whatever Peter Quil is listening to within his headphones or on his makeshift stereo, becomes the theme song to whatever moment he is in.

Whether he is escaping from a band of space pirates, exploring a moon’s dark crater or charming an extraterrestrial hottie, his music serves as the theme of the moment. Not only was this a clever way to display human attributes within the title character (that spends the entire movie among people that aren’t from earth); it explained that he is still tethered to earth in some form. Music was still a major influence to his mood and personality. It also gave the audience a chance to listen and appreciate music from decades ago. The audience got to hear some awesome cuts from Davie Bowie, The Runaways and Elvin Bishop. It was also a smart way for director James Gunn to use a recycled trick in movies. If you were watch a movie from two decades ago, every time there was a some sort of scene that suppose to exhibit emotion with the characters on screen (ideally a love scene), title music was used. For it’s time, it was the standard in all movies, that’s why you have all these awesome theme songs that remind you of classic movies, think Rocky with “eye of the tiger” or Top Gun “Take my breathe away”.

As I said before, most of songs featured are older classic songs, so most likely you’ve heard them before. Maybe you might have heard it in a commercial, the supermarket or from an older relative. But overall the use of music was another brilliant part to an already breathtaking movie. And through the graces of the Marvel gods, Peter Quil’s “awesome” mixtape is available for download on Itunes, so you too can be a dancing fool. Check out of the track listing below…

Now I have a question for my readers. Answer it honestly. Would Thanos be less of a badass if Death (whom he is in love with) were a man? Many of you know the story of Thanos and how/ why he tried to destroy everything in the Marvel universe. If you don’t know here’s a link. You should know a little something about it if you plan on seeing The Guardians of Galaxy, hitting theaters this week. If you don’t know, I will give a quick rundown.

Thanos was born of Saturn’s moon Titan, so yeah, this dude is a Titan. At first considered a pacifist, he was a nice kid, developing his super-genius level intellect that would make even Tony Stark look like a dunce, all while hanging with his brother (Starfox) and his pets. As he grew into a teenager he became fascinated with death. His interest evolved into worship it, worship transformed into infatuation and eventually he was in love with death. Death came to him physically embodied as a woman (Mistress Death) and declared that the only way to claim her affection was to kill as much as he possibly could, thus setting off the chain of events that would attract him the ultimate power in the universe, the cosmic cube (look for the correlation in the Marvel movies).

Ok, now you have a quick overview of the mad Titan’s story, so consider this, would his story be any less impactful if the physical embodiment of death were a man instead of a woman? Now, I don’t think Marvel should change history or anything, but I am curious to see if the reader would find Thanos just as intimidating if he had a thing for a dude. This thought came to me months ago while reading a post on Facebook about DC’s decision to make Alan Scott a gay man (during their relaunch of their characters in ‘The New 52’) and get married to his male partner.

As many of you know, when Alan Scott was originally written in the 40s and 50s, it was done so with him being straight. And of course DC did this to advise their readers of their stance on marriage equality. I saw the comments on this topic range from indifference, acceptance and ignorance, to insensitive and even hateful. I wondered if would it garner the same response if it this change were made to a different character? What about a character with extreme violence at his very core? There’s only one way to find out. So again I ask the question, would Thanos be less badass, or less respected and feared if he was in love with a man? Answer when you can peoples!

Although we must wait for this movie to come out and rock the movie theaters this summer, we do have the opportunity to feast our eyes on these new images of the Guardians of the Galaxy.

From left to right, check out the crew, you have Gamora, who will be played in the film by the extremely hot Zoe Saldana, Rocket Raccoon, who will be voiced by Academy Award nominee Bradley Cooper, Peter Quill, also known as Star-Lord, who will be played by Parks and Recreation’s Chris Pratt, the enormous tree-creature known as Groot, who will be voiced by (the man)Vin Diesel, and last but not least Drax, who will be played by WWE Superstar Dave Bautista.

Remember to tune into Jimmy Kimmel Live tonight for the full length trailer!